The Age of Commercialism

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The late 50's was a strange time for Movies. There were rumblings of an "expansion of consciousness" if you will, that resulted in attempts, like this one, to explore lurid, unmentionable gruesome violence (against Women), and sexual themes that were previously only barely hinted.If you were paying attention, it was obvious that the Arts were becoming a more liberal expression of primal urges (Rock n' Roll) that were always there but rarely talked about in polite company. So here we have this lackluster Serial Killer Movie that was just aching to escape from Studio and Audience conventions, but alas, it was not to be.The "grisly" Murders are very Ho-Hum, one if you can imagine, is just a guy being pushed into a swimming pool. The rest take place off screen. There is a lot of Psycho-Babble, the most scathing coming from a paralyzed hater of all Women. Some of this is slightly entertaining in a trashy kind of way, but not quite enough to save this stiff and incompetently Directed Movie.People talk and talk and say very little. The Sheriff's investigation is basically talk and talk, occasionally on the telephone, and everyone seems to have sunstroke rendering them immobility and inability to emote. This is a strange one at best, but at its worst is slowly paced, mostly uninteresting, and lacking any flare.

"The Girl in the Black Stockings" is a B movie, and I don't give it the tremendous historical significance one of the other reviewers did. It's obviously made cheaply, and the story is awkward. Directed by Howard Koch, it has a surprising lack of pace. The stars are Lex Barker, Anne Bancroft, John Dehner, Ron Randell, Marie Windsor and Mamie Van Doren. The plot concerns murders at a resort - in fact, the film begins with the discovery of a dead body, and several more follow. Dehner plays the sheriff. The resort is owned by a man with hysterical paralysis (Randell) and his sister (Windsor), who takes care of him. There's a Barrymore-type actor preparing for a comeback with the help of a va-va-va-voom blonde (Van Doren), and several guests, including Barker and Bancroft, who apparently have some sort of history together.The acting is okay with the exception of a very young Bancroft, who smartly underplays what could have been an extremely over the top character. Barker was very handsome and fit, but after reading that Lana Turner threw him out when she learned he was abusing her daughter Cheryl, it's hard to watch him. Most of the characters really aren't fleshed out enough to give the actors something to work with. Stuart Whitman has a small part, as does Dan Blocker, who plays a bartender.Not great.

Frankly, this a lame "B" flick, with hilarious dialogue, great locations and uneven performances.To even utter the phrase "film noir," in conjunction with this film, is ludicrous. Some of the comparisons found in previous posts are mind-boggling.Disposable characters, inane conversations and an annoying soundtrack are buffered by a wonderful setting - a kitschy, picture-perfect motel, straight out of a retro-fanatic's dream. Man, I want to stay at the "Parry Lodge" for a weekend!!Every time actor Ron Randell opens his mouth, you know you're in for some scenery-chewing, par none. Lex Barker is, well, Lex Barker. "Sheriff" John Dehner comes across the least scathed, although as a previous comment did point out, he appears to have wandered in from another movie set.All in all, worth a viewing, just to see what it meant to stay in a "motel" before Holiday Inn and Ramada ruined the experience.UPDATE: Lodge is still up and running - see parrylodge.com!

What can you say about a movie whose three female stars are Anne Bancroft, Marie Windsor and Mamie Van Doren? Well, that none of them is used at anywhere near her full potential (except maybe Van Doren, the sum of whose potential is exhausted at first glimpse). And that's basically the problem with this little tailfins-era whodunit about a serial killer at a Utah mountain lodge. Its very real potential is never delivered. The characters and plot strands are handled perfunctorily, mechanically; they're interesting and offbeat but not satisfyingly developed, so the solution comes as a bad surprise and something of a cheat. Owner of the lodge, Ron Randell, is a psychosomatically paralyzed woman-hater nursed by his doting sister (Windsor). Les Barker (not to be confused with Les Baxter, who wrote the score!) loses no opportunity to display his physique poolside as a vacationing L.A. attorney who's wooing the diffident Bancroft. Van Doren does her platinum-blonde bombshell shtik and John Dehner, as the sheriff, seems to have wandered in from a Western shooting nearby. The movie looks good, in a simplified, populuxe way, and winds up like a better-than-average TV drama from circa 1957. Too bad: The Girl in Black Stockings had all the makings of a more interesting movie.